Again, I will note that there were ongoing issues with the accuracy of some reporting on jobs by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and those issues were likely exacerbated by the government shutdown. The headlines from December are that 50,000 jobs were added and prior months were revised downward. Meanwhile the unemployment rate dropped slightly. We have over 6 million people who claim they want a job and can’t find one; I don’t believe a lot of those people want to work. We also have a large group, 5.3 million, who are working part-time but would prefer a full-time job, but there was good news on that front because the number of full-time jobs rose while the number of part-time ones declined. Still hard to tell what is going on with the impact of illegal immigrant removal. Native-born workers went down by about 650,000 while foreign born ones rose by over 300,000.
Federal government employment has dropped by 275,000 over the course of the year, that is good. In December jobs rose in food service and hotels, health care and social assistance. Not the best places for job growth. Retailers lost jobs. One piece of news I consider very good is that earnings rose at a faster pace than expected, 3.8% over the course of the year. Workers need all the help they can get. (BLS Report)
